It was a blast...no pun intended.

Thanksgiving, came and went, without much of a wimper. A brief dinner with nothing familiar mixed with being homesick was not a recipe for success. After hanging out for awhile with the other international students, I trudged upstairs and went to bed.

Friday, I woke up at around 9, talked to Jessica, and started packing for the trip. Talking to her was a good start that made up for the lackluster Thanksgiving. After Sean and I packed, we met up with our Aussie friend, Michael and talked about the travel plans. We all quickly decided to skip our class so that we could get into Hiroshima a little earlier then previously planned.

When we made it to the rental place, we paid, and loaded the car in what was a quite painless procedure. At 3pm, we hit the road.

We took the side roads to forego paying the ridiculous tolls on the highway, but, as a result, we got to see a lot of the country side. We drove through Hofu, Shunnan-City, Iwakuni and the view was beautiful. The colors on some of the trees we passed were the brightest I think I've ever seen.

After hitting some bad traffic, we arrived in Hiroshima 4 and a half hours later. However, it took us quite a while to find a hotel. We tried several hotels, all of which were full. Whether they were actually full or not friendly to foreigners is unknown. Eventually we settled on a quaint traditional style hotel that wasn't too far from the train station. We checked in our bags and headed out to find something to eat. There was a 12pm curfew as well.

We walked around for 20 minutes or so and settled on a lovely hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We all had お好み焼き which was quite delicious and a speciality of Hiroshima。Shortly after dinner, we strolled the downtown strip and found a cool little dart bar . We hung out there for an hour or two and I killed both Sean and Michael at darts. At 11:40, we made our way back to the hotel.

On Saturday, we woke up fairly early to some chilly weather. We checked out of the foreigner-friendly hotel and made reservations at another hotel nearby. This new hotel was even friendlier which we all were glad for. After we dumped our stuff, we drove to the Peace memorial park where the A-bomb dome and museum were located. We took pictures of the beautiful park and made our way inside to the museum.

The museum was simple but well-made. It was full of artifacts, pictures, and models of the atrocity that happened August 6th, 1945. I never knew what completely happened, but afterwards I felt quite humbled. The third floor was the most difficult to look at. This floor was lined with graphic pictures, models, and stories of what happened to the people of Hiroshima. Also, Yamaguchi was one of the original choices for the dropping of the bomb. Kind of makes you think...

A few hours later, we left the museum with everyone being humbled in there own way and made our ways to the shopping district. The shopping disctrict was huge with hundreds of shops stacked next to each other. I saw some crazy shit like several teenage girls dressed up as maids walking around with their mothers among other things.

After shopping we headed back to the hotel and chilled for a little bit before going out to the bars. When we did go out we ran into some other shady americans but we quickly ditched them. Eventually, we settled at a cool, but seedy-looking bar called Barcos. As the night went on, the bar became very packed and very fun. Everyone I met there was really friendly and we all had a great time together. When we left the bars, according to Michael and Sean, I laughed at a Yakuza who was getting tackled by the cops and we exchanged some "friendly" words. Good times..

We staggered back to the hotel by 3, snuck inside and went to bed.

Sunday, we packed up and headed back home. On the way back, we briefly stopped at Miyajima which is supposedly one of Japan's top 3 tourist spots. It's famous for it's large Tori gate and it's supposed floating shrine. Anyway, we took a ferry to this small yet impressive island and looked around for a bit. There were tame deer everywhere you turned..craziness. After about an hour we left and headed back home. The weekend was a wonderful change of pace..

The pictures from the trip are up...